Betsy C. Herold, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology-Immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, serves as chief of the division of pediatric infectious disease (Children’s Hospital at Montefiore) and vice chair for research in pediatrics. Dr. Herold directs a translational research program focused on the interactions between viruses and their host and using that knowledge to develop new treatment and prevention strategies. The lab’s basic science studies on viral entry led to the discovery of a paradigm shifting candidate vaccine for prevention of herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections, which is being advanced for phase I clinical trials. They are also developing HSV mAbs based on that vaccine and studying previously unrecognized viral immune evasion strategies.

Dr. Christian Münz received his Ph.D. in 1998 from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and the Institute for Cell Biology at the University of Tübingen. He joined as a postdoctoral fellow the Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology at The Rockefeller University, New York, in 1998. At the same institution, he was named research assistant professor in 2001, and assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Viral Immunobiology in 2003. In 2008, he returned to Europe to the University of Zürich, where he became professor and co-director of the Institute of Experimental Immunology. His laboratory studies the immune control of the human persistent and oncogenic Epstein Barr and Kaposi sarcoma associated viruses, focusing on dendritic cells, natural killer cells and T cells, as well as antigen processing by autophagy. He has published more than 300 articles on these and related topics, and has received the Burroughs Welcome Fund Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award and the Sobek Award among other honors for his research.

Prof. Clinton Jones labs research is focused on two neurotropic herpesviruses, herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and bovine herpesvirus 1 (BoHV-1). The topics they were examining include: 1) reactivation from latency of neurotropic herpesviruses, 2) identification of cellular genes the trigger reactivation from latency, 3) regulation of viral gene expression during reactivation from latency, 4) viral regulated signal transduction and programmed cell death, and 5) characterization of viral genes expressed during latency. Prof. Jones lab is funded by grants from NIH (NINDS and NIAID), and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Colin Crump is Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Cambridge, UK. His research focuses on understand virus-cell interactions and how host cell biology is modified during infection to promote successful virus replication and spread. He has a long-standing interest in the mechanisms of herpesvirus assembly and egress and the application of advanced imaging approaches to study infected cells.

Deepak Shukla, Ph.D., holds the Marion H. Schenk Esq. Professorship in Ophthalmology and serves as the Vice Chairman for Research at the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. He is also a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. Professor Shukla has earned significant recognition in his field, having been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and receiving honors from the American Herpes Foundation for discovering the HSV-1 entry receptor. His specialization in Ocular Herpes Infections encompasses in-depth research into their mechanisms and interventions. His extensive work has been published in over 175 research papers, with his contributions featured in high-impact journals such as Cell, PNAS, Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Angewandte Chemie, and Nature Communications. A well-cited scholar, Professor Shukla has accumulated over 20,000 citations on Google Scholar. His research has garnered attention from national institutions such as NIH, NEI, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and has reached a wider audience through features in Newsweek, The Atlantic, and Chicago Magazine. Dr. Shukla has been a key figure at UIC, being named UIC Distinguished Researcher of the Year in 2018, University of Illinois Scholar in 2023, and UIC Inventor of the Year in 2024, while serving on various committees.

Eleni Panagioti, Ph.D., is an Instructor in Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Staff Scientist in the Department of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Panagioti earned her PhD in Vaccinology from Leiden University, followed by postdoctoral training in Brain Tumor Immunology at Mayo Clinic and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has a longstanding interest in developing novel therapeutic approaches for treating gliomas and metastatic breast cancer, with a special focus on personalized treatment strategies. Her ongoing research employs innovative virotherapeutics and immunomodulatory methods to enhance both humoral and innate immunity in the treatment of IDH1-mutated brain tumors. Additionally, she investigates the molecular circuits of chronic cytomegalovirus infection to reverse T cell dysfunction in glioblastoma.

Dr. Cesarman was born in Mexico City, where she obtained her MD degree, followed by a PhD from New York University and Anatomic Pathology Residency training at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Dr. Cesarman was part of the team that discovered the Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV/HHV-8) and found that this virus is consistently present in a subset of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, designated primary effusion lymphomas (PEL), which led to the recognition of these lymphomas as a distinct disease entity. Current research efforts in the Cesarman lab are aimed at better understanding mechanisms of herpesviral pathogenesis, including the role of herpesviruses in the tumor microenvironment, with the goal of directly therapeutically targeting viral oncogenic signals, or indirectly through immunotherapeutic approaches. Dr. Cesarman has also conducted cancer genomic studies to gain a deeper understanding of the viral and cellular contribution to the tumor genetic and epigenetic landscape, focusing on lymphoma and other AIDS-related malignancies.

Dr. Hongyu Deng is a professor at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Deng earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Rochester, followed by postdoctoral training in cancer biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and tumor virology at UCLA. Her longstanding interest is to investigate viral replication mechanisms and virus-host interactions, so as to gain insights into viral pathogenesis and to develop better therapeutics. By integrating biochemistry, genetics, bioimaging, molecular virology and structural biology approaches, her team has systematically investigated the transcriptional regulation, lytic genome replication, and morphogenesis of tumor-associated herpesviruses (especially KSHV and MHV-68). Ongoing studies in her laboratory aims to understand the virus assembly mechanisms, to elucidate the interplay between viruses and the host innate immune system, and to develop new vaccine strategies. Dr. Deng is a recipient of the National Outstanding Young Investigator Grant, among other honors.

Dr. Italo Tempera is an Associate Professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation Program and the Associate Director for Cancer Research Career Enhancement, at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Dr. Tempera earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Rome "La Sapienza". During his doctoral studies, he explored the influence of histone modifications on Epstein-Barr Virus infection. Following this, he pursued further training in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Lieberman at The Wistar Institute, where he researched how the three-dimensional structure of the viral genome governs EBV gene expression during latency. In 2012, he established his independent laboratory at the Fels Institute for Cancer Research at Temple University. Dr. Tempera eventually moved to the Wistar Institute in 2020, where his lab continues examining the role of epigenetic machinery in regulating the EBV-host interaction.

Originally from South Korea, Dr. Jung began his career as a fellow and later a tenured professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetic at Harvard Medical School and served as Chair of the Tumor Virology Division (1989-2007). Dr. Jung transitioned to University of Southern California, assuming the roles of Fletcher Jones Foundation Endowed Chair, Distinguished Professor, Chair of the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Department, and Director of the USC Institute of Emerging Pathogens and Immune Diseases at the Keck School of Medicine (2007-2020). Currently, Dr. Jung is a Betsy B. deWindt Professor, Chair of the Cancer Biology Department, Director of the Infection Biology Program, and Director of the Global Center for Pathogen and Human Health Research at Lerner Research Institute at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Jung is widely recognized as a foremost authority in the field of herpesvirus-induced cancers, emerging viruses, anti-viral immunity, and the development and stabilization of antiviral drugs and vaccines.

In NIH, Dr. Cohen is the Chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases. His laboratory studies the pathogenesis and clinical aspects of human herpesviruses, including Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and herpes simplex virus (HSV). The laboratory focuses on vaccine development, discovery of monoclonal antibodies to viral proteins, and identification of cellular mutations in patients with severe herpesvirus infections. Recent findings include development of candidate vaccines for HSV and EBV, monoclonal antibodies to EBV, and identification of cellular genes that predispose to severe EBV infections. Clinical projects include a phase I study of an EBV nanoparticle vaccine, studies of patients with chronic active EBV disease, and studies of patients with severe virus infections to define genetic variants associated with the disease.

Joel Baines received a veterinary degree (VMD) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983, and a PhD in Virology from Cornell University in 1988. After postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Bernard Roizman at the University of Chicago, he became assistant professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell in 1993. There, he worked his way up the academic ranks to be named the James Law Professor of Virology in 2006, and Associate Dean of Research in 2012. In 2014 he was appointed the Kenneth Burns Chair in Veterinary Medicine and Dean of the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine. He returned to Cornell in 2021 as the James Law Professor of Virology (emeritus) and maintains a NIH-funded laboratory at the Baker Institute of Animal Health. Throughout his research career he has focused on molecular mechanisms underlying herpesvirus replication. Ongoing studies focus on viral transcription during productive and latent infections.

Lori Frappier, Ph.D., is a Professor of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, where she serves as Associate Chair & Graduate Coordinator. Dr. Frappier directs a research program that identifies the functions and mechanisms of action of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) proteins. In particular, her laboratory uses proteomics methods to uncover EBV-host interactions and host responses to EBV infection. These studies have led to important discoveries on replication and segregation of latent EBV genomes, destabilization of p53, interference with DNA damage responses, and inactivation of antiviral proteins, together resulting in a better understanding of the viral-host interplay enabling EBV persistence.

The research of Dr Maija Vihinen-Ranta’s group focuses on the interaction between viruses, herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and parvoviruses, and the nucleus. HSV-1 infection leads to the formation and expansion of the membraneless viral replication compartment for viral DNA replication and progeny capsid assembly. This is accompanied by the reorganization of the host chromatin toward the nuclear periphery. We wish to understand the mechanisms of HSV-1-induced changes in nuclear structures, including chromatin and nucleoli, and the dynamics of viral capsids in the nucleus. We have, for example, shown that capsid transport through the chromatin is the rate-limiting step for the nuclear exit of capsids and that the restrictive chromatin barrier becomes more permissive at late infection, allowing herpesvirus capsid diffusion towards the nuclear envelope. We are also interested in infection-induced changes in nuclear biomechanics and in the structure and function of mitochondria. Our parvovirus studies elucidate infection-induced nucleolar changes, intranuclear mobility, and nuclear export of parvovirus capsids. The lab is funded by grants from the EU Horizon project, the Academy of Finland, and the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation.

Sean Lawler leads the Brain Cancer Therapy Lab in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown University. He is affiliated with the Legorreta Cancer Center. He is Co-director of Therapeutic Sciences Graduate Program and CNS Cancer Translational Disease Research Group, where he is also the co-leader of Brain Cancer Research Program. The Lawler Lab investigates therapeutic approaches for the treatment of Brain Cancer, from preclinical models to the analysis of data from patient tumors, with the goal of developing the next generation of therapeutic approaches for these extremely challenging diseases. One of the main interests of Dr. Lawler’s lab is understanding the effects of a common pathogen, cytomegalovirus on the growth of the malignant brain tumor glioblastoma.

Søren Riis Paludan is a professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is director for the Center of Immunology of Viral infections. His research is focused on understanding how the innate immune system is activated during viral infections and how immunological activities can contribute to both defense and disease development. He is recipients of ERC Advanced Grant and Lundbeck Foundation Professorship.

Dr. Z. Hong Zhou is currently a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He is the founding director of the Electron Imaging Center for NanoMachines (http://www.EICN.ucla.edu) of California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA. Dr. Zhou was a Pew scholar and a Burton medalist. With a doctorate from Baylor College of Medicine and bachelor’s degree from University of Science and Technology of China, Zhou made pioneering contribution in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM). His group demonstrated experimentally the construction of backbone model (Yu et al., Nature 2008) and atomic models (Zhang et al., Cell, 2010 and Liu et al., Science 2010) of large biological machines solely by cryoEM. By cryoEM, his group also determined genome structures inside viruses (Zhang et al., Nature, 2015; Dai et al., Nature 2017; Liu et al., Nature 2019) and atomic models of herpesviruses (Yu et al., Science 2017; Dai et all, Nature 2019, Science 2018; Gong et al., Cell 2019). In recent years, Zhou has shifted his cryoEM efforts to smaller complexes such as the aging/cancer-related telomerase (Jiang et al., Nature 2013; Science 2015; Cell 2018), gene-editing related spliceosomes (Liu et al., Science 2017; Li et al., Nature 2019), drug design-related membrane proteins (Jiang et al, Nature 2015; Ho et al., Nature 2018) and precision medicine nanomachines (Ge et al., Nature 2020). In recent years, his group developed the cryoID approach for cryoEM (DOI: 10.1038/s41592-019-0637-y) and the IsoNet package (doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.17.452128) for cryogenic electron tomography (cryoET), enabling determination of native biological structures at atomic and molecular resolutions, respectively.

Dr. Barczak is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a clinical Infectious Diseases specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research laboratory at the Ragon Institute studies Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis in macrophages, including mechanisms and consequences of phagosomal membrane damage, and pathogenesis in lung tissue, including the pathologic matrix remodeling that contributes to post-TB lung disease.

Andrew Simonson earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Penn State University, developing lytic anti-mycobacterials to selectively target Mtb and synergize with conventional antibiotics. He then joined the TB Research Group at the University of Pittsburgh under JoAnne Flynn. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Center for Vaccine Research, his work focuses on studying the roles of different lymphocyte subsets in various models of protection in tuberculosis, including vaccination and concomitant immunity.

Dr. Anil K. Ojha is a Research Scientist at Wadsworth Center and Associate Professor at University of Albany, Albany New York. Dr. Ojha received his Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi India, and post-doctoral training from University of Pittsburgh. The overarching goal of Dr. Ojha’s research is to determine molecular basis of antibiotic persistence in mycobacteria, including one of the deadliest bacterial pathogens, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which kills over a million people every year. Utilizing biofilms as an in vitro growth model for mycobacterial persistence, his research is investigating the mechanistic relationship between ribosome hibernation, zinc homeostasis and antibiotic persistence.

Anna Tischler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Minnesota. She received her PhD from Tufts University and completed post-doctoral training in the lab of Dr. John McKinney. Her laboratory uses genetic approaches to identify and characterize mechanisms of Mycobacterium tuberculosis persistence, in the context of both host immune and antibiotic pressures, to reveal new targets for anti-tubercular drug and vaccine development. Her research is currently focused on central metabolic pathways and the ESX-5 secretion system that are essential for M. tuberculosis growth in the host.

Daniela Maria Cirillo MD, PhD, Clinical Microbiologist, Head of the Emerging Bacterial Pathogen Research unit and Deputy Director of the Division of Immunology, Transplant, and Infectious Diseases at IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan. Head of TB Supranational reference laboratory. She is also the head of WHO Collaborating Centre- ITA98 and Head of ESCMID Collaborating Centre in the fields of emerging pathogens ; Co-Chair of New Diagnostic Working Group of the Stop TB partnership ; Member of EUCAST Mycobacteria Committee ; President European Society of Mycobacteriology (2018-2023); Professor Master Global Health, University of Milan ; WHO Global TB Program Advisor Dr. Cirillo’s research focus is on mechanisms detection of drug resistance in MDROs of nosocomial origin and mycobacteria, ECOFFs definition for new antibiotics and application of NGS based technology in clinical microbiology. Areas of expertise: clinical mycobacteriology, next generation sequencing based diagnostic tools, research on new diagnostics for TB Infection and disease, in vivo and in vitro models to study TB/NTMs pathogenesis. Author of 369 publications, indexed in PubMed. Author of 6 scientific book chapters. Total citation 14006 H index (scopus) 61 In 2017, Daniela M. Cirillo was honored with the G. Middlebrooks Award.

Dr. Kirschner is a professor in the dept of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. She received her Bachelors, Masters and PhD in theoretical biology from Tulane University. She did graduate work also at Los Alamos National Labs and a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University joint with the departments of Mathematics and Infectious Diseases. For the past 25 years, her research focus has been on building multi-scale models to describe the host immune response to M. tuberculosis at multiple spatial and time scales and in multiple physiological sites including lung, lymph nodes and blood. To date she have worked and collaborated with experimentalists generating data on TB with mouse, non-human primate and human studies. her focus is on how to improve treatment regimens and strategies for TB. Dr. Kirschner currently serves (and has for the past 20 years) as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

G. Marcela Rodriguez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Rutgers Health and senior investigator at the Public Health Research Institute, Rutgers University. She received her PhD and MS from the New York University and a BSc from The Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia. Her research centers in the metal biology and the response of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to nutritional immunity. Her lab’s mission is to enhance fundamental knowledge about M. tuberculosis biology to identify potential targets for drug and vaccine development.

Hardy Kornfeld a Professor of Medicine with tenure at UMass Chan Medical School. He received his MD from Boston University School of Medicine and BA from Bennington College. His basic and clinical research is focused on TB immunometabolism, the effects of diabetes and low BMI on immunity to TB, post-TB lung disease, and adjunctive therapies to enhance the host response to antimicrobial TB treatment and TB vaccines.

Igor Kramnik, is an Investigator at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University and an Associate Professor at the Pulmonary Center in the Department of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. After obtaining his MD/PhD degrees in Moscow, he trained in mouse genetics, immunology and tuberculosis research at McGill University in Montreal and Albert Einstein School of Medicine in The Bronx. His research has focused on the pathogenesis of pulmonary tuberculosis and mechanisms of compromised lung immunity, and the development of novel host-directed therapies targeting lung damage inflicted by virulent Mtb in susceptible hosts.

Joel S. Freundlich, Ph.D., is a Professor of Pharmacology, Physiology and Neuroscience and of Medicine at Rutgers University–New Jersey Medical School. Prior to his return to academic research, he spent eight years in the pharmaceutical industry as a medicinal chemist. His undergraduate and master’s degree training were in chemical engineering at Cornell University as a McMullen Dean’s Scholar. He received his doctorate in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the tutelage of 2005 Nobel Prize awardee in Chemistry, Richard Schrock. His laboratory at Rutgers University focuses on leveraging computational, chemical, and biological tools in the study of infectious diseases.

Dr. Kyle Rohde is an Associate Professor in the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. His Ph.D. dissertation work at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences focused on TonB-dependent mechanisms used by Neisseria meningitidis for iron acquisition from host hemoproteins. His focus shifted to Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a postdoc in Dr. David Russell’s lab at Cornell University, where he applied transcriptomic and genetic approaches to elucidate gene regulatory networks involved in M. tuberculosis intracellular survival within macrophages. Since joining UCF in 2012, Dr. Rohde’s research portfolio has broadened to encompass gene regulation in Mtb and M. abscessus, antibacterial drug discovery and target validation in TB and NTM species, mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, and development of deoxyribozyme-based point-of-care diagnostic assays.

Larry Schlesinger is Professor, President and CEO of Texas Biomedical Research Institute. He received his MD from Rutgers Medical School and, following his clinical training, received post-doctoral training at UCLA. His lab focuses on the pathogenesis of tuberculosis and other airborne infections due to intracellular pathogens that subvert lung immune mechanisms as well as co-morbidities that enhance infection. His discoveries have led to greater insight into the unique attributes that soluble and cellular components of the human innate immune system bring to the microbe-host interface, translating them into host-directed therapy platforms.

Dr. Henao-Tamayo is a trained physician, immunologist and mycobacteriologist with over 20 years of experience using and developing animal models of Mycobacterial infection. She graduated as a physician from la Universidad de Antioquia, where she also finished her Masters in Ciencias Basicas Biomedicas. After that she move to Fort Collins Colorado and finished her PhD in Immunology. She is currently a Professor at Colorado State University, Co-Director of the Mycobacteria Research Laboratories. Her expertise is in assessing the protective immune responses to mycobacterial infections conferred by candidate vaccines, as well as the environmental and host factors that influence this protection.

Martin Rottenberg is a Professor in Infection and Immunity at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet. He obtained his PhD in Immunity to parasitic infections at the National Institute of Parasitology, Buenos Aires, Argentina and was a PostDoc at Armauer Hansen Research Institute, Ethiopia, studying the immune responses to leprosy, and then at the Dept Immunology , Karolinska Institutet. During more than 40 years he have studied the immune protection and immune pathogenesis to different human infectious diseases, including trypanosomiasis, chlamydiosis, listeriosis and tuberculosis, mainly in experimental models but also, in recent years, in patients. He have supervised 12 PhD students that have defended their thesis, 22 Post docs and 33 Master students and have authored more than 130 publications.

Dr. Mary Jackson currently is a Professor of Bacteriology in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology at Colorado State University. Dr. Jackson’s research focuses on the elucidation of critical pathways leading to the biosynthesis and export of (glyco)lipids, fatty acids and polysaccharides in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other mycobacterial pathogens of clinical interest (M. ulcerans, M. leprae and nontuberculous mycobacteria) with the goal to inform novel therapeutic strategies. Dr. Jackson has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles and serves on numerous grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health and other Federal, private, and non-profit funding agencies globally.

Matthew Champion received his bachelor's degree in Microbiology at The University of Iowa where he studied heat-shock responses in pathogenic Leishmania. On a lark, he went to graduate school at Texas A&M University under the supervision of Dr. James Hu and David Russell where he developed some of the earliest proteomics experiments in microorganisms, and obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry. He then worked as a Scientist for 7 years in the Proteomics division of Applied Biosystems, and in 2009 moved to Notre Dame a Research Assistant, then Associate Professor in the Mass Spectrometry facility. In 2019 he transitioned to Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His laboratory is primarily interested in developing and exploiting novel bioanalytical methods to probe mycobacterial pathogenesis, including the composition and function of the significant 'dark proteome' in M. tuberculosis and related species.

Prof. Nitin Baliga is the Director of Institute for Systems Biology, where his team deciphers molecular networks within pathogens, cancer cells, and microbial communities to enable solutions for global health, precision medicine, and environmental health. He has published >140 peer-reviewed articles with >30,000 citations, serves as editor for several scientific journals, and is on the board of Climate Solutions. Dr. Baliga's work has been profiled in The Scientist, Wired Magazine, ArsTechnica, Xconomy, and many popular science magazines, and his award-winning education and outreach efforts have impacted millions of students across all 50 states in the US and across >100 countries.

Olivier Neyrolles trained as a microbiologist and agricultural engineer. His research focuses on host-pathogen relationships in tuberculosis. He is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and heads the IPBS-Toulouse, a joint research unit of the CNRS and the University of Toulouse-III-Paul-Sabatier.

She obtained both her Masters and Bachelor's degree in Life Sciences at EPFL and she is currently doing her PhD in Prof. McKinney's laboratory, where she is focusing on studying the interactions between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and macrophages at the single-cell level.

Dr. Petros Karakousis is a Professor of Medicine and International Health at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. He currently directs the Johns Hopkins Tuberculosis Research Advancement Center (TRAC). Dr. Karakousis’s primary research interests are the molecular basis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis persistence and host-directed therapies for TB. Major research activities include studying the adaptation of M. tuberculosis to stress conditions believed to be important in the infected human host, as well as the phenomenon of phenotypic tolerance to antibiotics. In particular, the regulatory cascade involved in the mycobacterial stringent response is under active investigation. Dr. Karakousis has co-edited a book entitled Advances in Host-Directed Therapies Against Tuberculosis. In order to rapidly deploy novel therapies in the clinical setting, his laboratory has focused on studying the potential repurposing of various agents with immunomodulatory properties for TB. In particular, his lab has investigated the mechanism of action of statins (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) and metformin and studied their adjunctive activities against TB in preclinical models. He also has pursued a novel paradigm of boosting cellular immunity to Mtb “persistence antigens”, i.e., proteins that are expressed by persistent organisms displaying tolerance to conventional anti-TB drugs, using therapeutic DNA and mRNA vaccines expressing these antigens.

Robert O. Watson trained as postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jeff Cox’s lab at University of California, San Francisco. There he made fundamental discoveries related to the role of autophagy and cytosolic DNA sensing in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection of macrophages. In 2015, he joined the faculty in the department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology Texas A&M University, School of Medicine. His research program takes a multidisciplinary approach to illuminate the macrophage-Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) host-pathogen interface. In the past several years, his lab has become increasingly interested in how mitochondrial homeostasis impacts host innate immune responses to bacterial pathogens like M. tuberculosis (with a particular focus on cytosolic nucleic acid sensing and cell death).

Robert Wallis is Chief Science Officer at the Aurum Institute, where for the past decade he has led clinical trials of adjunctive host-directed TB therapies and new antimicrobial regimens. Prior to this, he has held academic and pharma industry positions, including most recently, leading the development of sutezolid for tuberculosis as Therapeutic Area Clinical Lead for Anti-infectives at Pfizer.

Dr. Behar is Professor of Microbiology and Physiological Systems at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, where he studies immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Dr. Behar and the members of his lab have made important contributions to our understanding of immunity to tuberculosis including T cell priming, acquisition of effector function, and memory responses. By understanding mechanisms of host resistance to tuberculosis, including how T cell responses are coordinated and integrated in vivo, and how bacteria evade immunity, his ultimate goal is to inform vaccine design and testing.

Sarah Stanley is an Associate Professor with joint appointments in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Division of Immunology and Pathogenesis and School of Public Health Division of Infectious Disease and Vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her lab studies immunity to M. tuberculosis with a particular emphasis on how the metabolism of host cells contributes to antimicrobial control. She is also a founder and scientific advisor for the Alliance for Global Health and Science, an organization dedicated to promoting science capacity building and research in East Africa.

Dr. Tony Hu is a Professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biomedical Engineering, and Microbiology at Tulane University. He is also the Weatherhead Presidential Chair in Biotechnology Innovation, founding Director of the Center for Intelligent Molecular Diagnostics at Tulane School of Medicine, and the fellows of National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Dr. Hu’s research focuses on engineered multi-omics, nanomedicine, mechanism-driven biomarker discovery and assay development. His research differs from conventional biomarker discovery and detection research for clinical microbiology in that it employs the special properties of nanomaterials to improve assay performance and reproducibility. His inventions are intended to serve as a model for the analysis of similar characteristics of infectious and malignant diseases to facilitate the development of a full spectrum of diagnostic, prognostic and treatment evaluation assays, and re-define the diagnostic criteria to differentiate disease stages using molecular tests as a long-term goal. His work has resulted in publications of over 150 high-impact papers, and 25 pat­ent applications involving nanomedicine. Fourteen of those patents have been licensed by US-based or international companies. Dr. Hu’s lab has been consistently support­ed by the DOD, NIH, Gates Foundation, WHO and others. Dr. Hu is also the co-founders of two biotech startup companies, Intelligenome Inc. in Houston, TX and NanoPin Technologies in New Orleans, LA

Dr. Vinay Nandicoori is a Molecular and Cellular Biologist who has contributed to delineating the signalling networks in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). He did his Masters in Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He was a Postdoc at Texas A&M University for 3 years and the University of Virginia for three and half years before returning to India in 2004. In 2001 he moved to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India as the Director, where he established his lab. His research interest is to delineate the kinase-mediated signalling networks in Mtb. In addition, his lab is also interested in identifying novel drug-resistant mechanisms, deciphering transcription regulation and identifying novel targets for host-directed therapy.

Volker Briken is a Professor at the University of Maryland in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics. He received his PhD from the University of Paris for his work on the intracellular trafficking of Fc and B-cell receptors. His postdoctoral work in the lab of Steven Porcelli at Harvard Medical School was on the intracellular trafficking of the human CD1 lipid antigen presenting molecules. During his time as Instructor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York he learned how to genetically manipulate Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the lab of Dr. Bill Jacobs Jr, who pioneered these techniques. Since then, he has been fascinated by to potential of genetic screens to uncover the many ways that Mtb manipulates the infected host cells. His main areas of interest are the interaction of Mtb with host cell death signaling, the host cell inflammasome activation and type I interferon mediated signaling.